Promise
by PinkyMcCoversong
Summary: Genma, with the help of Kurenai, finally manages to drag Hayate to his Monday night party. Upon arrival, Hayate remembers past encounters with Kurenai and what these might mean for their future. Hayate x Kurenai. OneShot.


**Disclaimer: Still don't own Naruto or the characters in said anime/manga. All I have claim to is my story, my plot, and the Monday Night Ritual. So no suing, please.

* * *

**

Sometime in the last year or so I developed a Monday Night Ritual. I trained. Every Monday night I went to the same clearing not to far from my place and trained. And I had every intention of doing so tonight, but it seems that Shiranui Genma has finally caught on to my avoidance of _his_ Monday night ritual – shinobi house party at the Shiranui estate. If I hadn't caught a cold this week – it seems I've been more susceptible to illness as of late; should look into herbal remedies – Genma wouldn't be hovering over me, dangling that senbon from his lips and leaning against the doorframe of my modest living room.

"Hayate, I think I know why you've been so sick lately," he tells me. "You _really_ need to get laid."

I roll my eyes and let out a heavy sigh before checking the clock hanging on the wall. It's 7:00 p.m. He's probably on the way back from the liquor store. I'd been trying to sleep off a slight fever. "If I do anything tonight, it's training," I say, coughing a little, "I have a new jutsu that I've been –"

Genma doesn't let me finish. He never does. "Hayate, you're an idiot. Take a decongestant and let's get the hell out of here." He moves into the room and grabs my arm. Being too tired to resist, I lift myself off the sofa, but despite my compliance he continues to argue with me. "It's not like I never have medic nins at the Monday Night Ritual. They, unlike you, enjoy a good party."

I don't know how the hokage hasn't caught on to the deviant behavior of his upper-level shinobi. I don't remember when it started, but I do know that it involved a bunch of special jounins who spontaneously heated up some sake with the intentions of having a drink or two to celebrate friendship. Somehow they didn't stop drinking until they all were passed out in a heap at Genma's place. Now it's a weekly party that goes until at least 4am. "Because Friday night should happen more than once a week," Genma once told me, shrugging off the taboo of Tuesday morning hangovers. I generally choose not to partake in the festivities, "for the sake of my health," as I usually tell my comrades.

I now see that Yuuhi Kurenai is standing behind Genma in my kitchen. "Oi, Hayate, you'll come tonight, right?" she says as she pushes a strand of dark hair behind her ear. "It's been so long since we've seen you outside of shinobi duties."

She's wearing dark jeans and a red top that clings to her shapely – if muscular – figure and accentuates the crimson of her eyes. I've always wondered what jutsu those special eyes allow her to perform, and having known the woman for years and never having seen her use any eye-jutsu in battle I'm inclined to believe that she harnesses some mysterious, forbidden power. "Hayate, you're not wearing that, are you?" Kurenai asks looking first at me, then to Genma as some sort of ally in getting me to change out of my sick-day sweats.

"Fine, fine you guys win," I mumble at them while turning toward my bedroom to find suitable attire for the evening. "But if I die tonight from booze and a head cold, I want it known that it's because I lost in a battle with peer pressure. My name goes on that rock."

When we arrive at Genma's place, the party's already going. It's lucky he has no neighbors to speak of since loud rock music is permeating the house in such a way that I can hear it in my boots through the floorboards. "They started without the host?" I ask Kurenai who has already handed me a cup. In her other hand I note a second cup and a bottle.

"It's always like this. Kakashi has keys," she explains, nodding at a few people she knows as we make our way through the crowd to find a place to sit.

We lounge quietly for a while, sinking into one of the plush couches and drinking one cup of sake after the other. Eventually I ask, "You do this every week?"

"Yes," she says, "every Monday."

The silence continues. I feel like I'm becoming part of the couch; the rich brown fabric is sucking me in. _I'm never going to move again_, I tell myself.

"Not your thing, eh?" Kurenai says, more making a statement than asking a question.

Suddenly I feel defensive, which is weird, because she's right. This isn't my thing, even though Genma always insists that at 23 I should be "taking advantage of youth." I tell him he sounds like Gai and usually get swatted into a wall before he laughs and walks away, leaving me to my antisocial solitude. Maybe I do need to get laid.

Just as I'm about to protest – I've decided to pretend that I rather enjoy parties, just to see how it sounds coming out of my mouth – Kurenai stands, shifting the couch that I had thought for sure had become a part of my body. "Your hair's always in your eyes," she says, reaching to brush the offending strands away from my face. I expect her to just walk away at this point, but she stands there, as if studying me for an exam in which she must identify and label different cities on a Hayate map. "Hmmmm," she says after a while, "you have nice eyes."

Then she walks away. I stay on the couch. I really like the couch.

There was a time when Kurenai and I could have been something – back in our rookie days, perhaps. Back before my known attraction to that violet-haired anbu woman and Kurenai's known attraction to that chain-smoking jounin. But what of our known attraction to each other? There was a mission once, when I found her looking at me with some sort of a promise in her eyes, and I couldn't help but return the promise to her. Since that day there's always been a promise between us. I just wish I knew what it was.

Within five minutes of my quality alone time with the couch I find myself scanning the room for Kurenai. I want to talk to her. I wonder how drunk she is...or how drunk _I_ am. I wonder if she's gone outside for a smoke with Asuma and if perhaps this will lead to their leaving the party together and suddenly, without my permission, my brain is filled with images of Asuma making love to Kurenai. And I'm not okay with it – the images _or_ the sex...with _him_.

Of course this jealousy seems a little petty considering that it's Sarutobi Asuma who has responded to Kurenai's advances, not Gekkou Hayate: the quiet special jounin more often seen with his fingers wrapped around a kunai than a slender female hand. She's been just outside my grasp for years and I've been too stubborn – or perhaps stupid – to reach out.

I'm about to get up and go rescue Kurenai from the walking Marlboro ad when Genma appears, female medic nin wrapped around each elbow, sliding a blonde one off his arm toward the couch which I have claimed as my territory for the evening.

"Oi, Hayate," Genma begins, slurring just a little, "I didn't bring you here just to waste away on _my_ couch."

"It's a good couch." I tell him. The blonde is now leaning on my shoulder and mumbling something in my ear about a cure for my ails. It's funny how you can give the smartest people in the world enough alcohol and they suddenly become the opposite of their sober selves. I smile politely at the girl, and move her hands away from me and into her own lap, and look back up at Genma's threatening scowl. "How drunk is she?" I ask him, and, to my surprise, hear the blonde medic huff, crossing her arms protectively across her chest.

"Why don't you ask her," Genma starts, "since she hasn't had more than a drink or two all night, and she just threw herself at you only to be rejected on account of assumed intoxication."

I turn to apologize to the girl, trying to think up some kind of explanation, only to find that she's run off into the next room.

"We thought you were nice, Hayate," the other girl says, frowning in disapproval. After my encounter with the blonde I hate to make assumptions but this one is definitely out of her element. She's leaning on Genma for support, rather than the lust that motivates most women's grasp on the jounin.

Genma sighs, stares at the ceiling for a minute, then looks back at me, his idiot friend. "I'm going to go see if Kurenai can't walk Yumi here home," he says, "She's had a little too much party." His last line seems to imply that I've had too little. He starts to walk away when I realize that he's also implied that he knows the whereabouts of Kurenai, my former sofa companion.

"Kurenai?" I shout at him in a less than dignified manner.

"Yeah. Who else is sober and responsible enough to take a girl home right now?"

"Me," I blurt out, then realize the flaw in that plan, and correct myself "you, perhaps?"

"Leave my own party? Who's gonna keep things in order? Kakashi?"

I turn my head and notice the silver-haired jounin table dancing for a circle of wide-eyed kunoichi. One would think a strip tease would involve the removal of that mask of his, but I've seen this act of his frequently enough to know that, not only will he deny its occurrence tomorrow, but somehow, in his inebriated state, his shinobi instinct to keep the lower half of his face covered is still there. The mask will stay. I shudder knowing what won't.

"What order?" I ask Genma, and hurry off to find Kurenai before he does. And I do.

Once when we were younger – she was 19 and I was 16, I remember finding her like this: slouched up against a wall in the hallway of someone's house, party underway, Kurenai alone. It was January, and a few windows were open leaking a draft into the house. I asked her what she was doing by herself when there was so much fun going on, and before I could finish, she jumped up, wrapped her arms around my shoulders and fisted both hands into the back of my hair. She smashed her lips into mine, kissing me as if tonight would be the last night she'd kiss me, or anyone, and then, after sliding her tongue away from my lower lip she walked away.

I asked her about it the next day and she said she just wanted to feel something. I'd heard shit like that before – or at least heard about that sort of excuse – so I let it go. At least I tried to let it go, it's not the sort of incident a man easily forgets, especially considering the unspoken and ambiguous promise that had come to be accepted between Kurenai and I. But tonight, seeing a very much grown-up Kurenai against a wall in a similarly lonely hallway, I know I won't let that sort of excuse past me again.

I crouch down beside her, leaning against the wall that she has claimed for herself. Her hair is hanging like a curtain around her face as she seems to be staring at her knees which are curled up against her body. I don't want to ask her what's wrong, but I do want to see those eyes of hers. I find myself sliding my hand beneath her chin, lifting it so that she faces me. I push her dark hair away to find that her eyes are threatening tears.

"Why do we do this?" she asks. I'm about to request elaboration on the question, since "we" and "this" could mean so many different things especially considering current and past circumstances concerning a very particular "we." However, Kurenai continues, "Every Monday, it's like this," she waves one hand about as if it somehow explains "this" a little better, but it doesn't. "These are my friends, you know? But I don't _know_ anything about them. These parties...they're so...impersonal."

I put my arm around her, hoping that it will stop the tears from coming rather than coax them out. "I know," I tell her, "that's why I don't like to come."

"I know," she says, "that's why I wanted you here." She's leaning into me now, one delicate hand placed on my chest, crimson eyes staring up at me as if I have the key to the meaning of life or something equally ridiculous. She blinks back the tears. "Can I kiss you?" she asks me. I ask her why and she says, "Because you _know_ me."

I pull Kurenai into my lap and brush her hair away from her face once again. I kiss her, slowly, gently, not wanting the violence of our last kiss eight years ago. This time she doesn't just want to feel something, and finally that unspoken promise we've had since we were kids is coming into place. To know each other. Maybe even to love each other.

I hear Genma coming and guide Kurenai to her feet before leading her out the back exit. He'll have to find someone else to take the drunken medic home, 'cause Kurenai is walking me home tonight.

* * *

**Thanks to LightningElemental for inspiring/challenging me to write this fic, to Fiona for reading it for grammar errors and plotholes even though she's never heard of Naruto, and to Lauren, as always, for Betaing and keeping my commas in check :D**


End file.
